Original subtitles

[woman crying]

[News] Ties to a cult may have lead to a fatal shooting

in Monroe County.

42-year-old Barbara Rogers

is charged with criminal homicide.

Rogers said the victim wanted her to kill him

and was undergoing a lot of stress

due to problems with a cult centered on aliens and rapture.

There are plenty of scenarios where

Barbara doesn't kill Stephen.

♪

But, I don't think there are very many scenarios where

Sherry Shriner doesn't betray Stephen Mineo,

and drive him to the edge.

[sirens]

♪ [electronic]

♪ [electronic]

♪

♪

♪

5 years before Stephen Mineo died,

there was another follower of Sherry Shriner's

that had a tragic death.

Her name was Kelly Pingilley.

[birds chirping & bugs buzzing]

♪ [choir singing]

It was Saturday morning, December 29th...

a couple of kids were out, walking around in the snow,

and they saw...

footprints leading into the woods,

and they decided to follow them.

♪ [choir singing]

And they walked along where the footprints

went through the trees and into a clearing.

As soon as they got into the clearing,

they knew that they'd found a body.

And, just like in the movies,

they went running home and told their parents that

there was a body out there in the woods.

♪ [choir singing]

So, the police get called out,

responding officer says that there's only

one set of footprints going to the body and

none coming away. And he investigates and

he finds the empty Sleepinal tablets.

And, she's wearing her tank top,

and her coat is folded next to her.

And he goes and discovers there's a car that

was parked up the road a little bit,

it's like 300 yards.

And then he goes through the car,

and that's where he finds her name and

some of her journals and a note for her parents.

♪ [choir singing]

♪

Oh, class. Oh, there she is.

What does it say?

"Kelly Pingilley chuckles while doing a worksheet.

Schoolwork could actually be fun at times."

I mean, if anyone was gonna think schoolwork's fun,

it would be Kelly.

This is Kelly painting a picture.

"Senior Kelly Pingilley puts the finishing touches

on her beautiful painting."

She was so bright. Like, she could do, like, anything.

Yeah.

God, she was so pretty. Her black eyes.

- I love that picture of us. - I do too.

It was me, Kelly, Bekah, and Brittany.

We were drawn together because I think we were all...

sort of outsiders.

Like, none of us are like obviously, normal is a spectrum

but none of us are within that sort of narrow normal.

We've all got our oddities that I think are maybe a

little bit more odd than the average 4 people

you would put together.

I'm representing Kelly, and she always dealt.

1, 2, 3.

We played games a lot. We had a lot of philosophical

and, like, religious conversations and stuff.

Kelly was always very deep.

And what I loved about Kelly, too,

was she could keep up with my weird brain.

I have ADHD, and, like,

I'm always bouncing all over the place.

She could keep up with me. And we could be

talking about, like, 4 different things at, like,

one time, and be able to be like,

"Oh yeah", and then relate back and forth.

And would not be like,

"Wait, what are you talking about again?"

We'd always just be able to keep up with each other.

And, I miss that.

I have that a lot with Brittany and Marcy too,

but, like, Kelly and I, like, clicked the most

when it came to conversation.

Kelly, in high school, was super smart.

I always felt like a moron when she was talking about stuff,

but then she would also break it down and

explain some things to me.

She was very caring and funny and,

you just clicked with her, and vibed really well.

You don't come across friends like that very often.

Like, once in a lifetime.

It's been 16 years now since I met everyone and,

I can't imagine my life without them.

[laughing]

It really is a shame that it's not 4 of us anymore.

♪

[Marcy sighs]

We were a unit.

♪

After high school, she often hung out at my house,

and that's when I started to notice a lot of the

weird things she was looking into.

I noticed she was on the computer a lot,

and I think that's when she started to

look into the cult stuff.

At first, it was just really minor to me.

You're like, oh, that's a weird video.

But she would have us watch...

Vigilant Citizen videos on YouTube, like,

and to analyze like, "Oh, look at Lady Gaga in her music video

when she does, like, this motion."

♪

Illuminati kind of stuff.

And Kesha and her music video, obviously, Illuminati.

And I'm like, "That's really weird Kelly, okay."

♪

Kelly would also watch Sherry Shriner...

videos and podcasts.

Everybody stand the ---- up!

♪

Kelly finds Sherry the way that

Sherry meant to be found.

She's looking into different conspiracy theories.

And so, I think the particular one that Kelly...

started with was someone who was showing

how Lady Gaga was a reptilian.

I have always liked to shape shift.

Or maybe, Taylor Swift is another very popular target.

To break down her videos and

show where her eyes look reptilian.

That was her entry, and one imagines that

in the comments section, she saw something like,

"No, here's the real truth about the reptilians."

[Sherry laughs]

Brittany, Kelly, another friend of ours,

and I were at Brittany's house.

And, I remember Brittany saying,

"Get ready for Kelly to talk to you."

And, I remember her that night asking

if I believed in the triune God. And, at the time, I did.

I remember her that night saying that

she thinks we're angels, the 4 of us.

It didn't stop after that.

♪

[train horn]

♪

The first time I met Kelly, she just seemed really happy.

She was always smiling.

And if I was having a bad day,

I could just call her and she'd try her best

to make me, like, feel better.

I feel like the first time Kelly talked about Sherry,

she did warn me. She was like,

"Her podcasts are out there." [laughing]

"I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to listen to 'em.

But just so you know, when you go in there,

and you look up and see it, just know this lady believes

some pretty out there stuff." I was like, "Oh, okay."

And I went. I was like , "You were not wrong.

This was pretty intense. I'll say that much."

♪

I know that Kelly was struggling with her faith...

shortly after her parents' divorce.

And she went looking for answers,

and she found Sherry Shriner.

♪

The way she explained everything, like,

it made sense at first. But then,

when you thought about what Kelly had explained

from her findings, you're like, actually, like,

let me double think about that.

And, this is a little weird.

But then, it just became, for lack of a better term,

Kelly's religion, and you know,

everybody believes something different.

♪

While she was doing all this,

she was also so very normal,

which is why I wasn't, like, that concerned.

I thought it was just more like a weird hobby kind of thing.

Kelly started transcribing for Sherry Shriner's podcast,

doing it as volunteer work.

[Sherry] I've told you to get super soaker water guns

with the orgone water.

That's like blasting holy water on them.

People wanna hiss about the orgone,

so I have spiritual warfare prayers for you to learn.

[Tony] I cannot imagine a worse way to spend your time.

You listen to Sherry's radio show,

which is poorly produced and, also, nonsense.

And then, writing it down.

And that is how Sherry got into Kelly's head.

Sherry's other way into Kelly's life was through orgone.

Kelly believed in it completely.

She believed it protected her from demons,

she believed it protected her from night terrors,

and she believed it protected other people,

even if they didn't think they needed protecting.

♪

These are the orgone pucks and

orgone rod that Kelly gave me.

I know when Kelly gave me, like,

the orgone pole, she told me to envision beams of light

shooting out, like, both ends.

And I always just thought, you know,

"Oh, so it's like a dual light saber, like, okay."

♪

And I know that she told me with the orgone pucks,

you'd want to form with the smaller ones a triangle,

since triangles are a really structurally sound

shape in nature.

So, basically, this is like industrial resin that,

like, holds all this stuff together.

Those are, like, aluminum shavings.

Then there's a copper coil inside of it.

And in the center, usually, is like a quartz crystal.

To me, orgone just was, like, another spiritual symbol,

like a physical manifestation of people's spirit,

like how Christians have the cross,

and Catholicism have the rosary beads.

[Tony] Just as with any other kind of enterprise,

you have to, you have to distinguish yourself.

And I think that one of Sherry's greatest successes...

was incorporating orgone into her theology.

And she Christianized it.

♪

She explained how orgone was a weapon that

God had left for them to fight evil with.

And, it was a tool.

♪

[Tony] So, what orgone warriors do is they find places

where orgone energy is weak, and they put pucks there.

And they take trips.

And it's a vocation and a hobby, all in one.

And they get way, way deep into it.

And when she gave them an assignment,

she made them part of the team.

You know, you're now part of the army.

And, people would volunteer.

This is the particular genius.

If I could go, but I didn't have the wherewithal to make orgone,

they would send me orgone.

The way that worked was people would donate to Sherry,

and Sherry would send the orgone to the people who would

then distribute it to wherever it was needed.

[Tony] People were clicking the donate button on her website.

People were sending her cheques in the mail.

And, that was happening...

enough for her to make a living.

♪

♪

♪

Here it is.

Always kept it safe...

in this thing.

It's a bit dusty.

This one was a letter that she wrote a year before...

as possibly the final letter,

but something delayed her for whatever reason.

♪

When I first got the letter from Kelly talking about,

you know, that all the werewolves and vampires and

such are real and all that, I didn't know how to take it.

I didn't know how to talk to her about it.

How do you tell somebody what they're believing is

crazy without getting them all super defensive?

And I didn't want to push anybody away further.

"List of things to know and remember 'cause your life

probably depends on it." It talks about orgone.

"The following creatures and beings are real.

Angels, male and female.

Vampires, which are actually an alien hive mind,

dot, dot, dot, ew."

[Brittany] One time I went to Kelly's house,

and she said, "Listen to this excerpt from

this one guy who knew Sherry Shriner."

He was very adamant about the Illuminati and

reptilians and...

at that point, I was like, "What are we doing?

Like, let's go watch a movie and stop this."

♪

[Marcy] I just thought she found some

interesting stuff on the internet and...

Maybe believed it a step too far, but it...

I did not think that...

suicide was in her path.

[Rebekah] I found out Kelly quit college and quit her job.

I found out about a month or two after she did it.

I didn't even know that she had quit school and work.

But she would still come out to, like,

Blue Roof and stuff, and she would still,

like, be actively Kelly.

♪

"The worst is yet to come.

Satan gets at least 3 and a half years on earth

when he's finally kicked, slash, thrown down.

But the Bible never says how long the forces of evil

are here before Satan and his forces get here."

I highlighted things, and I was like, what is going on?

I thought she was just trying to reach out to me, be like,

"Hey, since I'm not talking to you about this stuff,

here's the information."

♪

I remember at one point, Kelly was telling me about

how she believed in astral projection,

but through dreams.

And, Kelly was becoming abducted by reptilians and aliens,

and they were doing horrible things to her.

I specifically said, "I don't know how to help you,

but I can find somebody that will".

And, she said, "Not right now".

♪

I was at my sister's house, and it was rather late

when Mr. Pingilley called me.

And he said that he had some bad news.

And he told me that Kelly had killed herself.

And I said, "Shut the fuck up, that's not funny."

So, I immediately denied it. And then he said,

"No, I'm sorry.

I'm not joking. It actually happened."

And I just started crying, and I told him, "I'm sorry."

And he asked me to call people.

Um, so I did.

And I just had to say it over and over.

At some point, just started crying hysterically

'cause I just lost my sister.

♪

I was heartbroken.

And, like, even now, it's been so many years.

♪

You never expect that. Like, how...

how can you even prepare for that?

♪

I just started bawling and bawling and bawling.

And, I called my dad, even though I drove myself to work,

I called my dad. I'm like, "You need to come pick me up.

You need to come pick me up now."

And he kept asking me "Why, why, why, why,

why do you need to get picked up from work?"

I'm like, "Kelly's dead!"

♪

And it was a really rough ride home.

It's only a 7-minute drive, but it was a terrible drive.

♪

♪

♪

I have no clue where we are.

We are on a dirt road... in nature.

That is honestly all I can tell you.

This is where Kelly was found, in this area.

I don't know why Kelly would come here.

Kelly must have known of this place,

unless she was taking all sorts of weird back roads,

'cause I had to do about 2 to 3 freeway changes to get here.

This must have meant something to her.

♪

And so that night, the snow was threatening,

and Kelly drove out into Jackson County.

Whoa!

[Tony] And she parked at a public parking area.

♪

And then walked through the snow,

and down into the woods.

I'm so glad you're going first.

♪

[Tony] And then, she sat in the snow,

and she took off her jacket,

and she folded it, and put it next to her.

♪

And, the next day, a couple of kids found her body.

♪ [birds chirping]

- It's very peaceful out here. - It is.

[Tony] So, on her way out to the park,

Kelly had stopped at her local CVS and

picked up some sleeping pills,

a pack of 30 Sleepinal tablets.

And, when the police found her the next day,

it appeared that she had taken all of the tablets.

And later, the coroner would say they weren't certain

whether it was hypothermia or an overdose that took Kelly,

but the result was the same.

♪

So, near where Kelly came into the field,

the police found a white plastic bag filled with her journals.

And in one of those journals was a note for her parents.

"Mom and Dad, I'm off to fulfill my destiny.

I love you all!

Sorry I can't tell you where I'm going.

I don't know when I'll be back,

so I wanted to make sure you all knew that I loved you.

Also, sorry about the car."

Signed, Kelly M. Pingilley.

The, "sorry about the car," is just tough.

That's, that's just the toughest thing

I've ever read in my life.

I have daughters, my, my youngest is 19...

so, I empathized with Kelly more than I empathized

with anyone else in this whole story, at all.

♪

♪ [choir singing]

I don't think she thought she was committing suicide,

that's the hard thing for me.

Like, she did not think that she was dying fully.

She thought she was going to heaven

to give Yah the key to hell.

While she was in heaven with Yah,

she was going to be on a panel of some kind.

And, that doesn't sound like somebody

who's trying to die, to me. That's like,

they're, they're on a mission. They thought--

she thought she was gonna come back.

So, I don't know. I don't think it was like an,

"I want to die," kind of thing.

[Tony] I don't think that Kelly thought

she was permanently killing herself.

Once you start to look into the things that

she was writing and the things that she was saying,

you get the genuine impression that

she thought she was coming back.

It became clear to me that Kelly

thought she was an angel in the flesh.

I think that she believed that she could go to heaven

and come back.

And I think that she was

literally putting it in God's hands.

I'm not going to do something so permanent

that God can't fix it.

I have to believe that she knew that she could die,

but she didn't believe that she would.

♪

It's really hard to know what made Kelly susceptible

to Sherry Shriner because if anyone was gonna

be able to be logical about beliefs like this...

it seems like it would have been Kelly.

[Tony] When you find entrance to Sherry's world,

through whatever conspiracy theory,

if you're a 9/11 truther, if you're anti-government,

if you are big into the apocalypse or

the end times theologies, that's how you get in.

And then, Sherry explains to you how this secret war

between good and evil that's going on all around us,

and these are just aspects of it.

So if you think of it as the fight against evil,

the fight against the devil,

the war for the souls of humanity is the keystone.

And the rest of the conspiracy theories are tied to it.

♪

I saw a bunch of online articles about Kelly afterwards,

and people, in the comments afterwards,

would say like, "Well, she was obviously sick.

Why didn't her family or friends do anything to help her?"

I'm like, "'Cause it wasn't that obvious."

I mean, towards the end, I think it was more so

for her family, because she was typing in her,

like, Live Journal all the time,

and she quit her job and stuff.

But, like, us, as her friends,

didn't quite see it as much.

And as someone who has a psychology degree,

I kind of wish that

I kind of feel like I should have, you know?

Looking back at it,

I do realize she was in a lot of pain,

and maybe feeling lonely,

and also completely believing that

she's going on to her next adventure.

But, never having experienced anything like that before,

I just didn't know.

[Tony] When you read the Live Journal,

absent of any other information,

I see how you get to schizophrenia pretty quickly.

I do know that the word was

that schizophrenia ran in her family.

And as far as I've been able to tell,

that isn't true.

[Brittany] Kelly was never diagnosed with anything.

She might have suffered from depression,

but in this day and age, who isn't?

You know, so...

No, I don't think she was, like,

schizophrenic or anything of the sort.

[Tony] I feel like if Kelly had mental disorder

beyond depression, I feel like it would have

registered more with her friends.

Like, her friends knew that she was too into Sherry Shriner,

but none of them thought that...

she was crazy.

Nobody thought that she was unpredictable.

And that's, for me, the disconnect.

I'm not saying that Kelly didn't have

any mental health issues.

What I am saying is Kelly's mental health

doesn't need to take a front seat here

without the context of her

religious conversion to Sherry's beliefs,

and the fallout that comes with that.

There are passages in the Live Journal

that are practically unreadable.

And I mean like torture porn, unreadable.

Kelly describes in detail going to hell,

and what it was like to be in hell for

three years that she said that she was there.

♪

Kelly was talking about having been abducted by aliens,

and there was a lot of imagery,

actual explicit talk of sexual abuse in there.

So, she wrote that, "These are the sad,

brutal, horrifying, and disgusting truths about

my abduction when I was a child of 12 years old.

About the memories I've had to face,

and am still facing.

The worst of them are over, but there still a few

lingering memories and emotions to sift through.

These are also real memories.

I've suppressed them for 10 years,

and decided to be courageous,

and go through the healing process these past couple days

because I want my life back,

wholly and completely." And then...

her very last post talks about seeing

this mark of the beast, this satanic symbol.

"This kingdom coming ahead is putrid and disgusting

to the very depths of all the abominations that could exist.

I'm sure Yahuah only gave me the tip of the iceberg.

I guess if that's not enough to stop people from

joining this kingdom, nothing else would be."

So, really...

upsetting, personal experiences,

but also tying them into this doomsday mythology.

Often, the way conspiracy theories can work is

they will take sort of a kernel of personal trauma,

or personal fear, and find a broader rationale for them.

So, if she's talking about childhood trauma,

whether that's real or imagined,

not looking for the actual base of that,

but tying it into an alien abduction theory.

It's very upsetting.

♪

According to Sherry Shriner's writings that

I discovered online, that they started to have

a bit of a falling out.

♪

I think that at some point, Kelly had lost her faith in

Sherry Shriner and in her description of

what God really wanted.

I think that Kelly decided that

she wanted to be

the one to ask God what was going on.

I think Kelly separated herself from Sherry because

she didn't need a medium

between her and God,

and I think Sherry had a huge problem with that.

I think that would, that would make it

pretty easy for Sherry to just cut her loose.

And I think that that's what happened.

And as I was looking into how things went

with Stephen and Barbara, and I started to look at Kelly,

I realized that there was this pattern that Sherry had

of cutting people off and attacking them online.

There is a pattern, a clear pattern

that this is something that happens.

Sherry had a history of

not only separating out

the people that she didn't want anymore,

but organizing coordinated attacks.

I mean, that was just her M.O.

And then, everybody turns, you know,

wounded-shark-like on the person that

they've decided they're going to rip to pieces,

and then they don't stop until that person has been,

metaphorically anyway, ripped to pieces.

This culture in Sherry Shriner's world

of finding someone to,

literally finding someone to scapegoat and then

scapegoating them and sacrificing them to

the wild animals, is part of what

makes Sherry's organization run.

It's very important to always have an enemy from within

to complement the enemy from without.

♪

When Kelly died, rather than take

any responsibility for what happened,

Sherry made a new conspiracy theory about it.

She said that a, I believe, NATO hit squad

took out this 20-year-old girl.

And she said that Kelly had been ordered to kill her,

but rather than that, she took her own life,

or she was assassinated, or some combination of the two.

She took this young woman's death and

she made it about herself.

♪

[Tony] I don't think there's any doubt that

she was exploiting Kelly's death.

For Sherry, it was just a huge opportunity

to take advantage of this exposure.

I think Sherry saw this as, like,

her big chance to get more followers.

And so, that's how she responded.

I didn't really have an opinion

on Sherry Shriner, until after.

I'm sorry.

♪

I think Sherry Shriner is a predator...

And, like, the epitome of evil.

♪

Kelly believed Sherry Shriner,

just without question.

And I think Sherry Shriner took advantage of that.

[Tony] Sherry didn't kill anybody.

♪

Sherry didn't put the gun in Stephen's hands,

she didn't tell Kelly to go out into that field,

but she still is responsible.

This is, Sherry put the person

on the path and then...

withdrew her aid.

I think that's where these things keep happening.

It's not so much the nuttiness,

as it is the duplicity.

The enjoying betraying people...

the furthering your ministry by betraying people.

That is what makes Sherry

different from just some, you know,

lunatic who says everybody should kill themselves.

♪

Depending upon who you ask, Sherry is this evil cult leader,

or she's literally the daughter of God.

Sherry was fearless. I learned a lot from Sherry.

But then, the other side is, who's Sherry?

What I can tell you is the heresy that Sherry was

presenting is 100% counter to the gospel.

[Sherry] Don't come against me, folks. You... you will die.

Fair warning.

People come against me, they want to hurt me,

they're gonna die.

♪